JAN DOERFEL has been working as a barrister since 2003, specialising in immigration, human rights and civil liberties. Here he speaks to us on the current issues surrounding UK immigration

How did you come to choose your areas of expertise? From very early on, I was interested in immigration and asylum law. I grew up in Germany and followed debates very much around refugees coming from the former Yugoslavia during the Balkan war. I was very much opposed to a change in the German constitution qualifying the “right to asylum”, i.e. the right for politically persecuted persons to be granted asylum. Much later I found out that my grandmother and father were actually refugees: they fled from East to West Germany in the 50s. Once they crossed into West Berlin, after a journey fraught with dangers of arrest, they were placed in a refugee camp and were given refugee passports!

On human rights issues, I was first politicised when I was 15 or 16 years old (in 1988/89), and arranged a workshop in my school in Germany on apartheid. I was greatly inspired by the film “Cry Freedom”. I also approached our school authorities in Frankfurt to introduce a “Soweto day” in schools to commemorate the Soweto uprising of students in 1976. The reply I got from our head teacher was “then we would have to have remembrance days about everything!” and that was the end of it although I was granted permission to hold a “one off” school event on the issue anyway. Institutionally I guess my school could have gone to greater lengths to condemn apartheid!

What are some of the biggest issues facing the UK in terms of refugees/ asylum seekers and human rights at present? I would say immigration detention. I do hope that one day people will look back at our time and say: “Did governments really imprison people for crossing an arbitrarily-drawn border? How barbaric!” Most people never gain insight into the fate of many vulnerable individuals who are being detained for months and even years whose only “crime” it is not to possess the requisite travel documents: pregnant women, children, victims of torture, people with psychological and physical problems, men and women who are suicidal and attempt to self-harm. If the public knew, they would probably be appalled. The most insidious problem is the “culture of disbelief” within the immigration system, within the Home Office and at Entry Clearance posts as well as within the judiciary and even amongst nurses and doctors in immigration detention centres which means that, as a general attitude, immigrants are quite simply assumed not to tell the truth unless they can prove that they do.

For many people immigration is a difficult issue to deal with. Are there any changes that could make this an easier process? Well, yes. I believe the fear of immigration is created by the “unknown” and by negative publicity. Most people are actually motivated by good feelings, such as empathy, and if they knew about the fate of victims of torture and refugees, they would often say: “that’s terrible, no, of course we would not want this person to be sent back where they may be tortured, raped or executed!”

As to what the Government could do: if they were actually to introduce a new approach to immigration “which seeks to replace fear with understanding, discrimination with integration and incompetence with efficiency”[1], a Liberal Party pledge, then that would be a good start. However, that would require an entire overhaul of the basic foundations of the present immigration system.

How do you think the change of government will affect the UK’s immigration policy, especially for South Africans? On the 11th May, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party announced that they had reached some agreements on immigration policy. They agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work, and that the detention of children for immigration purposes should be brought to an end. A final Coalition Agreement is expected which would set out the policies in more detail, including the mechanisms for implementing the limit on the numbers of migrants. Before the election, the Liberal Democrats had advocated a “points-based system” with regional weighting – to ensure that migrants go to live in a part of the country which requires certain workers. This would certainly suggest the clear possibility that business migration to the UK would be curbed in particular to the capital, and this may well affect substantial numbers of South Africans wishing to migrate to the UK to work for a period of time. The extent of the effect can only be assessed once the mechanisms and limits are announced, as well as which types of economic migrants it will affect.

It remains to be seen whether anything will come of the Liberal Party pledge in the election campaign to bring in an amnesty or offer a two year work permit to legalise persons who have been in the UK illegally for a substantial period of time (but less than the currently applicable 14-year-period of illegal stay after which people may qualify for indefinite leave to remain). Such a step would certainly benefit a considerable number of migrants of all nationalities who have overstayed for that period of time.

For more information, visit www.jandoerfel.com or the International Research Centre on social minorities www.ircsm.org